Dropping Your Weight in Chum Kiu.

One problem a lot of people suffer from when doing Chum Kiu is that they loose their upright Structure and Vertical Spine, usually they get a bit soft and squashed in the Middle, I have seen this in people that have been training even longer than me, so what is going on, why is it so hard?

I think that as usual the problem is with the Words used to explain what should be done, or rather the understanding of the Words used to explain what should be done. 

Drop your weight!!

What does this really mean?

From my observations most people take it to mean drop your weight to the Floor, or at least into your Feet, and this is were the trouble starts, Chum Kiu is mobile, dropping all your weight into your Feet is not likely to make you move easier, on the contrary it will make it even harder to move, especially Pivoting.

So where do we drop it?

In reality we drop it nowhere in particular, we just drop it.  If you drop a Cup or a Book it may land on the floor, but if there was a Table or something under it you would drop it on the Table or whatever, landing has very little to do with dropping, in fact once the object has landed the drop is over. Once you have dropped your weight into your Feet all you have is heavy Feet.

We need to find a way to allow the things we drop to stay in free fall and not land at all, almost as if there was a string attached to them so that they are both falling and being held in space. Visualising the Concept is so important to moving forward in Wing Chun, if you can visualise it then at some level you understand it.

We are all very different with different powers of imagination, different references that we use in our imagination so it is up to you to film your own Movie, the one you will play to understand the concept, do not blindly accept someone Else's description of events, start from there and then see if you can find a better way to explain it to yourself.

My own movie of this is that my Spine is a Ladder with tens of tiny Rungs, I drop the weight from the top Rung only down to the one below, this begins a Cascade that sends the weight of the lower rung on down to the one below that and so on until my upper body is in my Pelvis. Once my weight is in my Pelvis I imagine that my Pelvis is a Plate and that all of my Body above it are other plates that create a "Stack of Plates", in the "Real World" when you pick up a "Stack of Plates" you only really pick up the "Bottom Plate" you only ever move the "Bottom Plate" and the rest just go along for the ride, at most all we do is make sure that the Stack is kept vertical by monitoring the middle of it.

This is my movie, words are a poor Tool for describing Feelings and it may make no sense to you, but even disagreeing with this will give you somewhere to start.

Motion Defeats Strength! So if in doubt MOVE.

Going Backwards in Training!!

Yesterday one of my Guys was over to train with me and at the conclusion of the evening he told me that he felt he was going backwards with his training. I know the feeling he was experiencing but is it really going backwards?  In the first couple of years of training everything is new, everyday you feel that you have added something to the Tool Box, it is an almost constant addition to your Knowledge Base, people quite wrongly {I.M.O.} think that this is moving forward, advancing, but it is really only collecting. 

The real training does not even start until you try to understand how to use all of this stuff you have collected, and how to relate everything to the "Core Values", it is often at this phase that people give it away, it just becomes "Too Hard" and they tell themselves that they just don"t get it often deciding to go and do B. J. J. instead. The truth is that this phase should be seen as an indication that you are finally beginning to make moves in the right direction, it is only when you start to ask Question's that you realise you do not have the Answers, if you are really lucky you will find that you are not even asking the right Questions and so you begging the search in earnest.

Any Kung fu takes a lot of time and a lot of thinking if you hope to get close to the real "Heart of the Matter", it cannot be achieved by only being involved for 2 hours an evening twice a week, it requires that you involve yourself in some related activity everyday, especially doing the Forms and thinking about what you have learned, and it is only when you start to think about what you have learned that you realise you do not know very much. The reality is that you do know quite a lot, it is just that for some reason in the early years we all think we know a lot more than we do, and if our Ego is driving the Wing Chun Bus this realisation can seem like a minor failure, which of course it is not.

There will be many times through the life of your training when you quite simply need to "GO BACK AND START AGAIN" and this usually reaps huge Rewards in Knowledge, but this does not really mean going back to grade 1 and do the work all over again, it is more that you need to take your Mind back to an earlier place, a place with no preconceptions and no aims of advancement and look at the information with new eyes, and a clear Mind, when you do this often you find that there was "One little thing" that you missed or overlooked that changes everything and propels you farther forwards than you could of ever imagined.

When ever I hit a Plateau I do not sink into a sticky Funk, instead I get excited, a Plateau is a sign that I have collected all the Clues to this section of my training, so instead of loosing momentum I get even more involved, I know that as soon as I digest all of the current information I will be hurled into the next phase of training if I am ready or not...................

Scenario Training

Last night we introduced a Scenario to training, quite simple, you bump into a Guy in a Pub as you are walking past, as you turn to apologise the Guy throws a Haymaker at you, the aim was to start from a non traditional Martial Arts position, from a position of surprise and unreadiness, discover how our body will respond to the surprise and then find how to get to a place to use your training. In theory it was very straight forward, but as always the reality was not what I expected. A lot of the people involved could not / would not start from the not ready position, they were pre-empting the attack, turning with their Guards raised even turning and striking as they did their play act apology, when I stepped in and asked for them to just turn around with their Hands down and no attempt at defence there were complaints that it was not what they would do in this situation, which is ridiculous because it is exactly what everyone would do in this situation.  No matter what type of "Killer Commando Ninja Warrior" you may think you are if you are not expecting violence then you will be surprised when you find it heading your way, and any "Bad Guy" that has decided that you will do quite nice in the role of "Latest Victim" will make absolutely certain that you are not ready for what he is dishing out, that you are in a very bad position and they will aim to keep you there.  Pretending that you can use your training without even the slightest notice is just going to make it even harder to get back on terms when someone has dropped their shit on you, and this should be obvious to everyone.

It is only Ego that has people pretending that they will not be caught like a Bunny in the Headlights, and sometimes it is also lack of confidence in their ability that stops them from starting in second place, but this is where we should spend most of our training time, it is easy to win a fight when everything is set up in your favour, when you are in the best position and the "Bad Guy" shows his Cards way too soon, if we are going to train in this way we may as well prepare to fight one legged Blind People.  If we hope to be able to get out of trouble we must learn how to operate from weak and almost hopeless positions, because this is where the Street Predators that we think we are getting ready for will do everything in their power to put us, find our way back into a position where we can use our training, and then play out your fantasy.

Some people do not understand what "Training" is, if we are training we are attempting to learn something new, we should not be surprised or disheartened if we cannot do it at first, we will be able to do it eventually, and when you are doing things that you can already do you are no longer "Training" you are "Practising".